ramblings

AutoHotKey script for controlling multiple music applications easily

With the following AutoHotkey script you can control multiple media players easily. In windows, by default all the keyboard shortcuts (special media buttons play, previous, next and stop) will go to all applications. Obviously, this will cause problems if I have both Spotify and foobar2000 both running at the same time.

The script solves the situation by examining window titles and the active window. The script uses following logic when deciding the window that will receive the keyboard button press:

Window that is active (determined by examined window title, for example)

Media player that is currently playing a song (determined by examining window title, for example)

The default player

The script should be easy enough to expand to more media players; the only hard thing is to figure how to determine if the player is actually playing something. In foobar2000, the window title is customizable to make the detection easy (DUI: Go to Preferences->Display->Default User Interface, CUI: Preferences->Display->Columns UI->->Main tab). You can append the following format string so that it will display [Playing] if a song is playing

$if($and(%isplaying%,$not(%ispaused%)),'[Playing]',)

UPDATE: The following script will use last activated window as the default player (see step 3).